


Companion Squared

by LondonKdS



Category: Doctor Who (1963), Firefly
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Male-Female Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-04
Updated: 2006-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:08:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25556359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LondonKdS/pseuds/LondonKdS
Summary: Inara's weirdest patron.
Kudos: 3





	Companion Squared

**Author's Note:**

> At the time that this was written, there was a brief meme of "characters from other canons as Doctor Who companions", and the inevitable pun inspired me. From the Doctor Who point-of-view, this is set between "The Invasion of Time" and "The Ribos Operation".

The single virtue most expected of a Companion is discretion. The New Pillow Book states in its eighth chapter that the most deadly diseases of Companions are gossip, boasting and name-dropping. The use of the word "deadly" is not entirely hyperbolic. It was not, therefore, surprising that Inara never mentioned her most unusual patron. The facts that she would probably be considered insane if she ever mentioned the details, and would possibly meet an even worse fate if certain elements in society believed her, were irrelevant.

It had, in general, been a stressful evening. The victory celebrations were only just winding down, but Inara was unable to wholeheartedly join them. She had loathed the former Independents, having seen with her own eyes the fates which women could suffer in the manly lawlessness that they so romanticised, but she had seen enough of the Alliance's more dubious activities to prevent her from viewing them as ideal rulers. Furthermore, the wealthy young man who had hired her time for the night had been a great disappointment. He had considered himself entitled to discuss his expectations for the most private portion of their time together as they sat at the restaurant table, in outrageously coarse and demeaning terms and at deliberately humiliating volume. When she had ordered him, as was her right, to immediately pay cash for the time elapsed and their meal and then leave her sight for ever, he had cursed her foully and thrown a whole ink-stewed octopus into the lap of her cream silk gown.

Therefore, she had not been in a forgiving mood when the big, wild-haired, shabbily-dressed, horse-faced man had slammed himself down in the seat vacated by her client and stared at her silently and intensely. She was used to stares, and would have dealt with him in a few words, but this stare was devoid of the usual sexual desire or threat. Rather, it seemed as if the man's large eyes were frenziedly sucking information from the air, into an insatiable brain. She was about to speak when he leaned over to her and quietly, commiseratingly, savaged her client's character in archaic Mandarin of an elegance and precision far beyond the talents of the greatest poets and orators of Sinon.

She gathered that her new acquaintance was a medical man, but failed to catch his name. They spent the rest of the evening discussing poetry, watercolours, archery, and the details of the preparation of various interesting psychoactive substances, before finally being asked to leave when they began an impromptu calligraphy contest on the tablecloth with the octopus-ink sauce. Giving up the evening as a bad job and not really considering the eccentric as a potential client, she allowed herself to consume enough wine to make her unusually uncontrolled. It was probably because of this that she accepted his offer to show her his private spacecraft, and a miraculous canine automaton that he claimed to have recently constructed. She retained in her mind, however, the awareness that she might have to fight her way out of the situation. Her instincts told her that the man was utterly innocent of malice towards her, but all Companions had it drummed into them that such instincts should never be considered infallible, especially with individuals showing signs of mental imbalance.

She was struck dumb by the technological advancement of the vehicle, and the mechanical dog, which was far more than a mere automaton. At this point, the gentleman bemoaned to her that a female acquaintance (of unclear status) who he had taken in as an ignorant child had recently left him to marry a police officer (who it was clear that he considered unworthy). She became aware that he was asking her, in roundabout fashion, to become his personal Companion. When she mentioned money, he was highly insulted, and it became clear that she would be provided only with her board. However, it appeared that the board would be of considerable luxury, and he implied that she would see marvels beyond the dreams of the most fantastic popular fiction.

The following three years were, by a considerable margin, the most exciting of her life, and after her subsequent social fall she was grateful for the lessons they had taught her in the proper responses to danger, hardship and rough company. She encountered astonishing locations, creatures and people of forms never imagined in her era, nightmares that proved to be people of impeccable morality and kindness, and people who proved to be nightmares whose deaths she came close to enjoying. Her patron's charm and intellect were utterly endearing, despite his incredible arrogance, indecorousness, and unpredictability. She discovered that her role could change in an instant, acting at times as personal assistant, conversational partner, nursemaid, hostess, technical assistant, spy and deceptively unobtrusive strong-arm. In short, he was the rare patron who showed both awareness and need of almost every element of a Companion's training. The only element of service which he failed to require, and actively ignored any allusion to, was the sexual one. She initially assumed him to possess exclusively inverted tastes and to be ashamed of them. When, after several months, he had failed to show the faintest desire for any of several strikingly attractive men they had encountered, she accepted the matter as a mystery.

Her patron's true identity and antecedents also remained a mystery, and she considered it a matter of honour not to seek more information than she was given. At one point she (only half-jokingly) implied that he might be the irascible but kindly wandering doctor Lǐ Tiěguǎi, or possibly even the madcap and androgynous Lán Cǎihé. He laughingly denied both, but talked of the Bā Xiān without reverence, as one might of distant acquaintances of equal rank.

When it became clear that he had finally bored of her company, and that she was nearly exhausted by his constant intensity, he agreed to return her to the time and space where they had met. She refused his offer of the mechanical dog as a gift, fearing that it would arouse unwelcome attention. He appeared somewhat hurt, but wished her every luck for the future.

Many years later, Captain Malcolm Reynolds and his crew found themselves in an extended but usually good-humoured contest for an ancient and valuable artefact with a mysterious and frighteningly intelligent little man whose accessories showed a tasteless obsession with the Roman question mark. On several occasions when his astonishing strategic ingenuity had defeated them, their rival made it amiably and indirectly clear that they would be unpleasantly dead were it not for his magnanimity and that of the young woman who acted as his primary muscle. Once, however, at a significant moment, he astonished Inara by mentioning a certain private joke. She failed to acknowledge it, but allowed Malcolm to assume forever afterwards that her aim had been off on that occasion.


End file.
